Tuesday 2 July 1661

To Westminster Hall and there walked up and down, it being Term time. Spoke with several, among others my cozen Roger Pepys, who was going up to the Parliament House, and inquired whether I had heard from my father since he went to Brampton, which I had done yesterday, who writes that my uncle is by fits stupid, and like a man that is drunk, and sometimes speechless.

Home, and after my singing master had done, took coach and went to Sir William Davenant’sOpera; this being the fourth day that it hath begun, and the first that I have seen it. To-day was acted the second part of “The Siege of Rhodes.” We staid a very great while for the King and the Queen of Bohemia. And by the breaking of a board over our heads, we had a great deal of dust fell into the ladies’ necks and the men’s hair, which made good sport. The King being come, the scene opened; which indeed is very fine and magnificent, and well acted, all but the Eunuch, who was so much out that he was hissed off the stage.

Davenant's work was first staged in 1655 and is considered the first opera in the English language. Having an all-sung drama was convenient in a time when spoken theatre was out-lawed, as well as innovative. a revival in the latter sixties though, cut the music out almost entirely, so the innovation didn't really catch on.

Eunuch singers were all the rage in Italy at this time. Spain likewise had an appreciation for their unusual art. France and German speaking countries seemed to receive them more coolly, prefering them heard and not seen. England too was more ambivalent until the great Italian stars of the mid-eighteenth century (Farinelli, Seresino) took the stage by storm.

i wonder if this fellow was of mediocre talent as well as being a discomforting sight for the unaccustomed British audience at this time.

The Locals being not modern medicos, would not under stand the signs of strokes, even in this 21C, I had a friend that the Policia [and they are exposed to seminars, out lining medical problems] thought he was drunk & he was actually having a massive series of strokes. They took their [*]time before they called an ambulance to the scene.When people have problems with brain mis-activities, they appear to always go with the low IQ function Output rather than all the possibilities that they may be present.

Vicente:You are so right. The poor uncle may had different kind of fits. We do not have enough information or signs to diagnose. Today I would not dare make a diagnosis "by phone". But this uncle, and SP himself are not with us anymore, so I will try: "fits" was used to describe a short attack of unconsciousness, as in a epileptic attack. Lets assume it was the consequence of a cerebral vascular episode. He had a disarthria (difficulty to speak) or disphasia or aphasia (meaning he could not understand or explain himself). Then the local barber came to his help and took from him a quarter or two of blood from "the proper side" were I presume he was paralized. If the family could pay for it he gave him some nice purgative, to "clean" his bowels by a diahrrea. After this treatments he was left completely dehidrated, reducing his chances of recovery.

"(...)in 1656, the first English opera - The Siege of Rhodes - was played before a paying audience at Rutland House in London.

No puritan troops turned up to stop it, and the show proved so popular that Davenant wrote a sequel - The Siege of Rhodes, Part II - as well as two jingoistic dramas promoting Cromwell's foreign policy, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru and The History of Sir Francis Drake. Cromwell died prematurely in 1657, and it became clear that a restoration of the Stuarts - and with them all the traditional British liberties, including the stage - would soon follow. And so opera in English was born, an illegitimate child of the puritan decade. Like many of his compatriots, following the Restoration, Davenant was much preoccupied with the events of the preceding years, and so began to stage works that reflected the recent political traumas.

as I mentioned, a revival of "siege" had no music implying that the original intent was simply to perform drama during a puritan age. English Opera as an illegitimate child of the times didn't really ever take off. a couple of decades later a form of "semi-opera" became popular which consisted of a spoken drama with a whole lot of show stopping music, much in the vein of today's musicals. All-sung drama didn't really become popular until Italian opera arrived around the time of the first Hanoverian king.

it is nice to see Sam enjoying something rather cutting edge despite the eunuch.

As Daniel says, "semi-opera" was a gorgeous spectacle; by the time Purcell was producing "The Faery Queen" and "King Arthur" later in the century, the strange convention had arisen where the main characters (think Titania, Oberon, and Arthur) were not permitted to sing, only the less grand characters. Short operas by Blow ("Venus and Adonis") and Purcell ("Dido and Aeneas") overrode this notion; but their example did not catch on. Handel's operas were in Italian, his "dramatic oratorios" in English---indeed, one has to wait till Thomas ("Rule Britannia") Arne's "Artaxerxes," in the late 1700s, before you got opera, in English, sung throughout. But Sam Pepys, like Sam Johnson, might have rated that an "exotic, irrational entertainment."

Davenant's opera of the "Siege of Rhodes" was published in 1656. The author afterwards wrote a second part, which Pepys saw. The two parts, as altered, and as acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields, were published in 1663.---Wheatley, 1899.

Throughout the Restoration period, and indeed, until the later 19th century, the main scenic system of the English theatre consisted of wings fronting pairs of large flats, all of which were moved in grooves arranged at intervals on the floor and flies of the stage. During the Restoration period the stage curtain was rarely used to conceal a change of scene; as Pepys indicates here, one pair of large flats was usually drawn aside to reveal another scene arranged behind them on wings backed by another pair of flats. The scenery for the Siege of Rhodes was designed by Jack Webb. According to Downes (p. 20), the 'Scenes and Decorations' at Lincoln's Inn Fields were 'the first that e'er were Introduc'd in England'. It is more accurate to say, however, that the Lincoln's Inn's Fields Theatre was the first public theatre in England in which painted settings were continuously used.

This part was taken by John Downes, who became prompter at this theatre in 1663, and in 1708 published his invaluable Roscius Anglicanus https://archive.org/stream/rosciusanglicanu00do...in which he admits (p. 34) his failure in this performance and attributes it to the 'August presence' of Charles II. (L&M note)